realmolo:I don't know this guys financial situation, but I'm always amused when people that can't afford their vehicle are surprised when it gets repossessed.

Buy a cheaper vehicle, dumbasses.

For some, it is because they bought what was an affordable vehicle at the time, but later on a job loss or whatever made the payments unaffordable. You can't sell the vehicle because usually you're upside down on the loan, so you're basically screwed.

Like I said, in SOME cases. In most, though, people get more vehicle than they can afford and fall behind relatively quickly, or are dealing with one of those shady buy here pay here places that will repo your shiat if you're a day late.

buzzcut73:realmolo: I don't know this guys financial situation, but I'm always amused when people that can't afford their vehicle are surprised when it gets repossessed.

Buy a cheaper vehicle, dumbasses.

For some, it is because they bought what was an affordable vehicle at the time, but later on a job loss or whatever made the payments unaffordable. You can't sell the vehicle because usually you're upside down on the loan, so you're basically screwed.

Like I said, in SOME cases. In most, though, people get more vehicle than they can afford and fall behind relatively quickly, or are dealing with one of those shady buy here pay here places that will repo your shiat if you're a day late.

While you're probably quite often right about people being upside down on the loan and trapped, one would not be upside down if he/she bought a vehicle they could afford with a sensible down payment and loan duration.

Basically, unless you are VERY careful with your money, or are comfortably in the "upper-middle-class" income level, you shouldn't spend more than about $10000 on a vehicle. Hopefully less.

Vehicles are an *incredible* waste of money. You should try to go as cheap as possible (you still need a relatively reliable and safe vehicle, of course).

Americans have a huge blind spot when it comes to the cost of their vehicles. Especially in the last 20 years or so, people that DO NOT have the means are buying brand-new vehicles and spending enormous percentages of of their incomes on the payments. That's insane.

.....and if you are able to bring it current and just need a bit of time, store it in a locked garage. They will get it eventually but that can buy you some time. Had it happen to me when my ex took the car with her when she left (both on the loan couldn't report it stolen) swore payments were being taken care of then returned it to me owing almost 5 months worth of payments. Clever biatch switched the contact info too so no collection calls or mailings to my house. Couldn't work anything out with the loan company, they had already done everything they could with the ex so I was farked if I couldn't come up with almost $1700.00 on the spot. I was able to garage the car for a bit and hide it but they got it eventually out of a friend's driveway at like 2am. farked up thing was I had gotten it down to about $300.00 plus the next payment. I'd have been current in another few weeks.

I guess what I'm saying is don't buy a car with anyone else attached to the loan, which should have been common farking sense anyway.......

jst07:While you're probably quite often right about people being upside down on the loan and trapped, one would not be upside down if he/she bought a vehicle they could afford with a sensible down payment and loan duration.

While you're correct, you also are living in fantasy land if you think that's how most people make their financial decisions. People are emotional and irrational, especially when it comes to money, so saying in essence "people should do X", the reality of the situation is that they just aren't doing it that way.

We need to start gearing our society to the way that people actually ARE, rather than the way we think they should be.

I did something similar once. Was at a BBQ over at a friends new townhouse where they had assigned parking spaces. Buddy told me that I was parked in the "visitor" spaces. About 2am, we're sitting out on the deck drinking beers and we hear a loud truck rumbling in the parking lot. I casually strolled over to a spot on the deck where we could see that parking lot to see what poor bastard was about to have his car towed and I discovered that I was the poor bastard. Booked down to the parking lot just in time to catch the driver "hooking" my tires in (before they were raised and before he put on any chain. We had words. He tries to tell me it'll cost me $100 for him to take the wheel things off of my car. While we argued I was looking at the hook up and noticed that my car was not fully hooked to the truck. I told him to eat a dick, hopped in my car and gave it the gass until the rollers shot out from beneath the tires right into his tow truck. Parallel parked my car on the street and then went back to the parking lot to talk some shiat and do a victory lap. Approximately an hour later as we're out front about to leave a PG County police car pulls up and the cop proceeds to harass us for about 30 minutes. Had us standing out there like the farking Five Heartbeats. I never saw the tow truck driver call the police so I do not know if the incidents were connected or if it was just one of those nights.

jst07: "buzzcut73: realmolo: I don't know this guys financial situation, but I'm always amused when people that can't afford their vehiclehouse are surprised when it gets repossessedforeclosed.

Buy a cheaper vehiclehome, dumbasses.

For some, it is because they bought what was an affordable vehicle at the time, but later on a job loss or whatever made the payments unaffordable. You can't sell the vehicle because usually you're upside down on the loan, so you're basically screwed.

Like I said, in SOME cases. In most, though, people get more vehicle than they can afford and fall behind relatively quickly, or are dealing with one of those shady buy here pay here places that will repo your shiat if you're a day late.

While you're probably quite often right about people being upside down on the loan and trapped, one would not be upside down if he/she bought a vehiclehouse they could afford with a sensible down payment and loan duration."

Why the double standard?

Why do we fight so hard for foreclosure reform to protect people who made majorly irresponsible decisions about borrowing for their homes (and blame the "predatory" banks), but so quickly and harshly condemn people who made minorly irresponsible decisions about borrowing for their cars (and cheer the lenders)?

spmkk:jst07: "buzzcut73: realmolo: I don't know this guys financial situation, but I'm always amused when people that can't afford their vehicle house are surprised when it gets repossessed foreclosed.

Buy a cheaper vehicle home, dumbasses.

For some, it is because they bought what was an affordable vehicle at the time, but later on a job loss or whatever made the payments unaffordable. You can't sell the vehicle because usually you're upside down on the loan, so you're basically screwed.

Like I said, in SOME cases. In most, though, people get more vehicle than they can afford and fall behind relatively quickly, or are dealing with one of those shady buy here pay here places that will repo your shiat if you're a day late.

While you're probably quite often right about people being upside down on the loan and trapped, one would not be upside down if he/she bought a vehicle house they could afford with a sensible down payment and loan duration."

Why the double standard?

Why do we fight so hard for foreclosure reform to protect people who made majorly irresponsible decisions about borrowing for their homes (and blame the "predatory" banks), but so quickly and harshly condemn people who made minorly irresponsible decisions about borrowing for their cars (and cheer the lenders)?

The difference is that the banks WERE predatory. Yes, a lot of people made terrible decisions and bought more house than they could afford, but the banks knew that those terrible decisions where going to make them (the banks) money.

Car dealers might push you into buying a vehicle you can't afford, but when the holder of the loan is forced to repo your vehicle, they LOSE money. They don't want people to default on their car loan for that very reason. With the mortgage-lending crisis, they mostly didn't care if you made your payments or not. At least, they didn't care until it all came crashing down.

Why do we fight so hard for foreclosure reform to protect people who made majorly irresponsible decisions about borrowing for their homes (and blame the "predatory" banks), but so quickly and harshly condemn people who made minorly irresponsible decisions about borrowing for their cars (and cheer the lenders)?

That's a interesting way of putting it. I would say neither practice is great, but I don't feel bad for people when they lose a car they couldn't afford. Putting a family out of their home - that's a little worse. Still stupid people making stupid decisions, but unfortunately the kids that have no choice are the ones really hurt then.

Had a truck repoed a long time ago. Heard them hooking it up, ran in the yard, grabbed a shovel. Repo guy saw me, punched the gas on the tow truck ripping the bumper off the truck, and took off. Law showed up shortly thereafter. Toyota still hates me. Fark em

Come visit some time. It isn't "Brunstucky" any more than any other suburb these days.

That said, a friend had the repo guys coming for a car his uncle had left him when the uncle passed away. Friend couldn't pay off the loan until the estate was settled but that wasn't good enough for the loan company. Friend had to "hide" the car until the estate was clear to pay the bill. The repo guys used every trick in the book to get into the guys garage where the car was stored, and many of the tricks they tried were unlawful. Didn't matter, they were supposed to get the car.

I live on the 27th floor of a condominium and went on thr balcony early one Sunday morning to drink coffee and smoke a joint. I looked down and they were putting my car on a flatbed truck. I have two cars, but only one underground parking spot, so one had to be parked on street. Went down in only my robe and socks. Seems I was parked facing the wrong direction. Driver would not take credit card, only cash to release my car. He did let me ride with him to lot to pay lady to get my car back.

Kenny B:Had a truck repoed a long time ago. Heard them hooking it up, ran in the yard, grabbed a shovel. Repo guy saw me, punched the gas on the tow truck ripping the bumper off the truck, and took off. Law showed up shortly thereafter. Toyota still hates me. Fark em

realmolo: "Car dealers might push you into buying a vehicle you can't afford, but when the holder of the loan is forced to repo your vehicle, they LOSE money."

[citation needed]

When the holder of a car loan is "forced" (seriously? forced?) to repo your vehicle, chances are you've already made a bunch of payments on it and the car is worth MUCH more than the outstanding balance on your loan. I don't have time to research all the stats, but I'm guessing the number of people who default immediately after purchase is pretty low.

If you bought a car for, say, $5,000, made $2,500 in payments before defaulting, and then got the car repossessed, then unless the car has lost more than half its value in the time you've had it (not likely), the lender is breaking even. Where is your sweeping generalization that lenders lose money on repos coming from?

Suppose the car is worth $15,000 and the loan balance is $20,000 at reposession.

Worst case, the lender is out $5,000.

Best case, the lender sells the car for $5,000 to an associated business. The remaining balance on the loan is $15,000. Lender collects that from the borrower and is now even on paper. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the associated business flips the car for a $10,000 profit. That gets split with the lender (or the principals of the lender) and some businessmen have made $10,000 more than if the loan had been repaid without repossession.

Repo'ing cars is actually a lucrative business and contrary to what's been said here, lenders don't lose out as they can still sue the borrower for the full amount due, even after they repo the vehicle.

Step 1 - repo the car

Step 2 - "Sell it" to your friendly auto broker for WAY under retail value, much less loan balance outstanding

ZAZ:If everything goes right the lender comes out way ahead after a repo.

Suppose the car is worth $15,000 and the loan balance is $20,000 at reposession.

Worst case, the lender is out $5,000.

Best case, the lender sells the car for $5,000 to an associated business. The remaining balance on the loan is $15,000. Lender collects that from the borrower and is now even on paper. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the associated business flips the car for a $10,000 profit. That gets split with the lender (or the principals of the lender) and some businessmen have made $10,000 more than if the loan had been repaid without repossession.

My dad knew someone who did something similar as a business. He ran a used car lot that also would offer financing. He would give easy credit to anyone who wanted to buy a car. If the person who bought the car made on time payments he made a nice profit.

However he made most of his money on people who couldn't pay. He would immediately repo the car after two or so missed payments and resell the car for basically what it sold for. By the time the average $5~10k left the lot - he had "sold" it several times - usually for $5~10k+ more then the actual selling price.

My roomate's deadbeat boyfriend has his car sitting in front of my house right now. He hasn't made a payment in 6 months. He got it from one of those 'buy here, pay here' places. The place was a little lenient when it came to non-payments, but they had all their cars lowjacked, and if you were late, they'd remote kill your car. Sucks for you if you where parked at a football stadium, or out in the middle of nowhere.

So he solved the problem by removing their lowjack device and hucking into a pond somewhere. Now the damn thing doesn't start and he has no money to fix it. I'm ready to have it towed.

spmkk:realmolo: "Car dealers might push you into buying a vehicle you can't afford, but when the holder of the loan is forced to repo your vehicle, they LOSE money."

[citation needed]

When the holder of a car loan is "forced" (seriously? forced?) to repo your vehicle, chances are you've already made a bunch of payments on it and the car is worth MUCH more than the outstanding balance on your loan. I don't have time to research all the stats, but I'm guessing the number of people who default immediately after purchase is pretty low.

If you bought a car for, say, $5,000, made $2,500 in payments before defaulting, and then got the car repossessed, then unless the car has lost more than half its value in the time you've had it (not likely), the lender is breaking even. Where is your sweeping generalization that lenders lose money on repos coming from?

Wrong.

ZAZ:If everything goes right the lender comes out way ahead after a repo.

Suppose the car is worth $15,000 and the loan balance is $20,000 at reposession.

Worst case, the lender is out $5,000.

Best case, the lender sells the car for $5,000 to an associated business. The remaining balance on the loan is $15,000. Lender collects that from the borrower and is now even on paper. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the associated business flips the car for a $10,000 profit. That gets split with the lender (or the principals of the lender) and some businessmen have made $10,000 more than if the loan had been repaid without repossession.

And wrong.

I used to manage repo vendors for a huge international bank. I won't say the name because I'm about to say shiat I'm not supposed to say.

The average loss on any given repo for this bank was about $4500. That's right, every repo costs the bank about $4500, and that includes the auction after the fact. And here's the kicker: my bank was really, really good at managing risk and minimizing losses. When every other bank was getting killed by depreciation value on end of term leases, we were doing just fine, because we're so conservative. And I find it laughable that you think lenders get any money back from the customer after the unit is repossessed. Seriously, you have no farking clue what you're talking about. We sometimes get SOME money back, but it's never the full amount. In fact, our recoveries department is pretty much allowed to just offer a charged-off or repossessed customer a payoff of 10% of the loss amount.

And all of the shows about repo companies are bullshiat. As soon as any customer confronts any driver, the law in every single state requires the repossessor to leave the scene. It's called breach of peace. That kung fu video above is total bullshiat. As soon as the guy stepped in front of the car, the driver should have dropped the unit and left. And no, drivers never, ever get into fistfights with the debtors because that will get the lender sued in one second. No repo company that allows that kind of behavior will get any work from any respectable lender.

I could tell you some crazy farking stories, though, between my years in collections and vendor management.

/had a customer get murdered and stuffed in the trunk of his/our unit//had another customer smuggle illegal immigrants into AZ in her/our unit///one of our drivers was shot in the head as he was repoing (another bank's) unit. Yes, he died.

Mike Chewbacca:"And I find it laughable that you think lenders get any money back from the customer after the unit is repossessed."

Huh? Why would the customer give the lender a single red cent after the car is repossessed? The lender has already recouped 100% of the collateral plus whatever payments were made before default...what makes you think the customer owes the lender anything more?

Mike Chewbacca:"The average loss on any given repo for this bank was about $4500. That's right, every repo costs the bank about $4500, and that includes the auction after the fact."

Um...care to explain how or why? Used cars don't depreciate all that fast. Auction fees aren't all that high, and are usually the buyer's responsibility anyway. Defaults usually don't happen early on, so generally a substantial portion of the car loan has already been repaid by the time the car is re-appropriated.

Furthermore - if you're going to claim that auction prices are lower than retail, note that selling cars at auction is 100% the lender's choice. There is nothing stopping them from putting their cars up on Craigslist like the rest of us, or selling them on consignment via used-car dealerships -- or buying dealerships outright if they're repo-ing enough cars.

Either way, a claim of an average loss at all -- all the more so an average loss of $4,500 -- definitely fails the smell test without a bit of explanation.

Why would the customer give the lender a single red cent after the car is repossessed?

The contract says the customer has to pay back the loan, minus whatever the lender claims to have sold the car for after repo, plus costs of collection. If you are obviously broke and likely to remain broke the lender may write off the loss or take a small fraction of the value in settlement (see above). If you are likely to have money within a few years, a lawsuit can make sense.